PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

We blaze the darkening highways. Cactus flowers are melancholy in blue moonbeams. The horizon ahead whispers “fresh meat” chanting. You’re stuck in a dream and whether it’s good or bad doesn’t matter because it’s just a dream… one long drawn-out penance living like a peasant in your crazy mother's elaborate little runaway escapade

Latinos were landscaping and the birdsong was youthful and vibrant in the trimmed summer trees. My sister stepped out of the passenger seat which I then folded open and joined the ladies on the driveway with bent backs cracking. You could smell the freshness of awareness in the air and a keen strange feeling flooded my system… fairly exhilarating I dare say. I looked around for a moment and then carried my things inside the house.

The cats like vampires hissed from aback their plastic boxes and snuggled stiffly in the dim. Their whiskers twitched as they sniffed for hints. Boxes throughout seem to breathe fiercely with the presence of the Past. Be wise stay inside like the cats.

The next day I checkout a barbershop to buzz my dreads off. It was a humble downtown shop. The barber happened to be busy grooming a couple toddlers. I waltzed out onto the curb and smoked a cigarette while I waited for my turn and watched the cars rumble the road. Old classics with a twist of silver drills by slick street mechanics who know. I smush the smoke beneath my toes. The barber welcomed me kindly with a nice, clean cut.

Now it’s time to find a job.

*

I met a fella, whose names to become the bane of where I fantasized relinquishment would endow. Powerhouse of a sentence for the nonexistent crowd that is my audience. If it doesn’t make much sense to you, I'll have you know it’s not necessarily supposed to. Keep it vague play it safe. Anyways, he was perched on a discreet, backstreet curb, taking a break from the inner city alms bowl and chaos as he slobbered over a decoy Dasani plastic bottle of vodka. straight up!

The shadows were shivering silver beneath

The full moon’s gloom through foggy trees..

It was peculiar enough being pushed into such unique community, thanks to my mom’s trying triumph by moving away from that which never seemed to suit her soul... but what’s this got anything to do with me? was I birthed indeed?

Our home sits directly across the street from a cemetery

with a horrendous possum problem. Possums by the plenty

possibly only play dead as part of some pretentious jest

*

I took the squeegee to the sink and made the station sparkle, then started to go over the bus-route in my head. I spent enough time planning it on paper the day before, like a military map, so I was quite confident and calm about getting to my apartment safely. I hopped on my cruiser and pedaled to the college where the midnight bus would be. When I got to the bus-stop I kicked out the kickstand and set the bike somewhere on the sidewalk. I flicked out a cigarette and smoked, blowing smoke up into the moon. The lady next to me on the bench was speaking in spanish on her phone. I don’t know spanish- only a few restaurant words- but it sounded like complaining. There were actually bats above, too, and they were busy doing whatever it is bats do.

The bus rolled down the hill in the moonlight, chugging along like a train and slowing with a sway as it relied upon all those mechanisms that held it together, like shocks and such. The thick plastic doors slid and folded open and the driver greeted you when you swiped your pass in the machine and then you found a seat. I racked my bike while any other passengers who waited at the stop with me could get on first. This seemed the most efficient way. This time though, since it was quite late, there were no bikes on the racks and the rack was hinged up tight, so I had to inquire about how to pull the thing down. Luckily this was a very friendly driver; he had noticed me attempting to figure it out, but when I couldn’t and looked up, he was already miming how. When I stepped on the bus I smiled and said thanks.

*

It was quiet and hollow and I was bonkers drunk. The vodka was dusty-cheap and I splashed it with equal parts water in a coffee mug, stabbing an olive through with toothpick and plopping it in there and whispering dusty martini, dusty martini instead of dirty. I’d enjoy several of these chased by chugging a beer that my street partner from the year before had got me hooked on. It was a very strong beer popular among the homeless and he had sworn that “they put something in there,” that there were conspirator chemicals fizzing inside the cans. It was bottoms up and blackout most nights so I don't really recall what went on, after a point, except I get the sense I didn't sleep much because I barely remember waking up in my bed. I get the image of it vaguely in my head but it bears insufficient consistency to call concrete. Anyways, either I woke up or was always awake but I wasn’t scheduled to work that day and decided it would be groceries.

There was a Mexican market across the street but it was bad. I located a better one on my phone about twenty blocks past the downtown stretch. I strapped on my pack and walked through the community towards the main roads. I made sure to stop and admire for a moment the beautiful fruit trees along my street, pomegranate, avocado, peach, and there was even a devil’s trumpet. It was the first time I ever saw devil’s trumpet flowers in the flesh and I quickly became obsessed.

The strangers along the way will creep from their corners and appear as they please.

There were sleeping bags hid behind pillars on a great marble patio. Down the steps the surrounding sidewalk was scattered with bent needles and a golfclub. I couldn’t help but wonder what the kill-count is on the golfclub, and whether the victims’ souls are engraved with a glyph into the metal hammerhead purposed to feed the dark overlords till they can inhabit human forms. With a feverish bloodlust. Yes, we believe in entities veiled from the common. Which Which?

I’d say the world is out to get me.

If you tell me your deepest secrets,

You won’t be my enemy, baby…

I stayed faithful, not got frighted, and focused on walking. Step by step I neared the grocery store. I was in the habit of cooking the same dinner every night, a rice dish with a bed of fried eggs laid flat at the bottom becoming a burrito you could wrap the rice up with at the end, avocado, and steamed tomato. That was my only meal, so my list was pretty simple… But how could I forget the booze? There was an enticing wine named “juggernaut” which had this intricate portrait of a roaring lion on the label. Twenty bucks for a bottle of wine is ten times what I’d spend at the other market; but I had a small savings which ultimately became my liquor fund strictly.

*

My dad had set me up with a box of tea when he furnished the place with some very nice items he scored on craigslist. I was sipping a fresh cup at the wooden, lion-footed table. The dude who came by to clean the couch and carpet, with a motorized vacuum that attached to his van via cable cord, was informing me about how very much he and his girlfriend loved to get high, and if I needed a good weed hook, he could be my guy. I wasn't plenty a fan of weed to join the market, so I didn't respond but watched him whip around the suction snake like he was venue janitor for a rave or something. He wiped his runny nose on one of my couch cushions, I think because he thought I ignored his friendship. It wasn't intended, I was just oblivious. I sipped my tea. My dad was sorting out the rest of the stuff downstairs in the little parking yard for our little building. My new neighbors were peeking out their blinds curious yet cautious. Sometimes I walked past the woman in the first window, peeking out as she stirred fragrant cuisines in a copper pot, on my way along the rail and down the balcony. I would smile and say, "Hola, buenos Dias," happy to practice my pronunciation of a language I had come to adore. "Andale, Andale," she often responded, waving her towel at me like I was worse than a nuisant fly in her ear.

*

It's hot in here, a sauna I would say,

It stinks like sorrow and burnt edges,

Can't tell if that's the spiritual smoke

Wisping from the incense at the open window-

Alleyway echoes, gardenbootstamps,

Marijuana punches thru the sidewalk.

*

I thought I'd take a beach day. Funny because when you're young and growing up in always familiar lands, you nurture this vain subconscious that you know everything there is to know, that this is the is all and all there is. So, while I prepared for the beach, at last freed from the recent seasons of sex-trafficking, I didn't know what to expect, with my ever-maddening mindset. Not like I contained the capacity to perform logical thought in the first place. I just went. What treats might the gulls be fishing up this witch-o-clock spiral of a sea? I suppose we'll see.

I’ve come face to face with death... smashed thrice with a steel pipe wielded by a heroin-addict in a public playground at night. It would hurt just to think about the nightmarish nature of this fanged illusion. And saying illusion is more for coping than anything else. I’m only a paranoid smoker if it’s cheap, okay? Get the pure crystals and its game on. Hard to satisfy. As Ahab tosses his pipe into pearly waves of white.

The coffee-machine will drip, beep, and I will drop, fainting onto the floor. I’ve never felt quite this starved before, simultaneously supercharged by epiphanies, left and right, day and night. But my spirit can’t take it any longer… the portal quakes with blinding bombs of light. Your audience will become an angry mob. Oh yeah, we’re going to the ocean alright!

*

They locked me up for freaking out at a McDonald’s. All I wanted was a refill but the bitch behind the counter craved conflict. She said that since I brought the cup outside that it was a contaminant and I couldn’t.

“Can’t we just use another cup?”

“Nope sorry,” she smirked.

She was instigating an outburst and refused service even when I offered to pay full price. It was a somewhat sketchy sector and thus there was a security guard stationed at the entrance. He stood there probably zoning out most the time, till a battle cat like myself struts on through. The squabble sparked into frenzied flames and nobody wants a tantrum. The guard came in and grabbed my backpack and tried tugging me out like a dog on a leash. He didn’t speak the redwhiteblue too good, and didn’t bother investigating what the problem might actually be. It seemed we competed for the gold medal in a tug-a-war streetfighting olympics. Now he must’ve been about twice my age, though small and undaunting. He wasn’t emaciated like me but still very manageable indeed. I had a blast making him wrestle my wretched self. There happened to be a leak in the ceiling right in front of the counter with a bucket on the floor below where the murky droplets gathered into a cesspool. I kicked the bucket over and the swamp spilled out. He slipped and flipped and hit his hip, triggering his pistol to fire. The bullet whizzed.

*

Accursed crayons in gibberish journals,

Doctor notes and deceptive seduction

Of nurses in tight black spandex skirts,

And no tomorrow please no tomorrow

You pull the pregnant from my belly!!!

The patients of the psyche ward are

The modern shamans of the westworld,

Prisoners poisoned throughout the day,

Months if you can’t escape, life at stake

Maddened by mind mazes enslaved-

Sacrificial genocide, future of mankind.

*

It wasn’t my first time being forced into the psych ward. Maybe the third or fourth. Hard to think when math ain’t my thing especially. I could go into detail about all the craziness and chaos that went down prior to this particular timeline, but that would stray too far away for my mind to manage, and yours too methinks. Don’t wish to put my readers thru the same shit I got stabbed in the ass with needles of grim laughter. It was absolute confusion. The system seems to feed on poor people subject to familial distress etc. Someone trying their darndest, caught in a mess, deciphering corrupted code-language that only satiates the 1% vampires at best. No?

Well, they had got me again, and locked me up and oh god what the goddamn are they trying to accomplish in those places? I had long hair and am in the habit of utilizing rhymes to keep the party alive and express the melody that’s on my mind. It was my second or third set of baby dreads and they were the healthiest so far by far. I was a skinny bitch hid himself in his rundown apartment practicing yoga and becoming quite the little shaman but it was really just addiction. To be specific, though I am certain this is already entirely evident, I was your typical alcoholic trivial channeler. In the end it’s only a matter of whether you’re willing to accept “whatever come what may” to quote an old poet. We can howl to the moon still, even when the night is shrill as a baby’s scream realizing it has been brought yet again to hell.

They try to convince you you’re crazy and play all sorts of games so they can gain a deceptive power advantage and suck your daddy’s money up whilst altering your brainblood to a viscosity chemicalized so thin like isopropyl which is calling you another sacrificial guinea pig. But it’s for science, dear patient, don’t you wish your name could go down into the books as a sweet, special breed of schizophrenic? We’ll fix you, fix you good, with this here glinting fairy dust, trust us…

During this vocation of unwarranted psychiatric rehabilitation, there were a few characters struck mine eye. One was this skinny fucking guy didn’t have a sense of how to dress properly, tossed on sweatshirts o’er the gown of the guise of goodly care, bundled up with who the fuck cares; but who could blame him? It was cold as ice in those corridors and whoever claims the right to judge a man’s contemplations of coziness, step forth and suffer the consequences of superhuman violent swings! And he had a reach too, being nearly seven feet, I’d guess. Which brings me to my next point regarding this shipwrecked boy (hopefully he’ll find shore soon); the main thing about this angsty anorexic was he wanted so badly to punch someone. Fortunately for all of us patients present he was able to will enough self-control so that only the air conditioner’s blaze of icy chilled chemical coddling corruption got hurt. Probably worked as a way to protect we community of patients from freezing to death or drug-induced delirium by “fighting off the cold,” so to speak. Oh, the way we must speak to please the people and feed by merely breathing along to silly songs.

*

When I had finally been discharged after my 5250 was fulfilled, and upon rejoining my little crypt, what with its beige, stained carpets, I waltzed eagerly back into my bleak bedroom and collapsed like Romeo when he suspected his soulmate, Juliet, was dead. Well, you know how the story goes. My avocados had all but gone to rot. They sagged in their custom chalices, which I had crafted and adorned for them like your own tender mother once chose your cherished childhood clothes for you. But evening cast its last sad shadows and gloomily their fruits will never bloom but instead just stooped there with (albeit once beautiful and pristine) heartbroken tentacles hushed and haunted. I fell to the floor and went weeping into grave despair.

And that was the final milestone which pretty much marked the climax of my time spent in that conflicted city of both trees and treason, where my temporal hermitage brought me to the brink of literally peeling off my skin and hanging myself from the crumbling ceilings of a rotten apartment above. But hey, I can only blame myself, cliché master. That’s what the mountains of crushed cans abundantly stuffed in the closet continue to say even unto this very day. And I believe them too, I really do... So yeah, that about wraps it up, folks!